A good photo of the newest team member here at Project ALPHA (name to be changed soon), engineer Bruce Mataya. He's worked on Mars rover systems, the Air Force 1 coffee system (do you think that is low-priority? think again!), micropumps for several satellite systems and Formula 1 vehicles.
Great talk by Peter Madsen, cofounder of Copenhagen Suborbitals, which we have joined since August 2013.
If you missed it first time 'round, here is the altitude chamber test of the pressure suit I built over the last four years, five if you include a year of just reading It was one heck of a great day in Copenhagen! Narrated by Kristian Benge, lead capsule designer at Copenhagen Suborbitals. CS were recently awared the FAI Breitling Award for years of working on putting a person into space by a private, DIY approach. Congratulations guys! Here in Portland our organization is now coming together as the US arm of CS (website etc on the way), working on the space suit and life-support systems, which I'll test in a 2015 balloon flight to above the Armstrong Line (c.65k feet) where a pressure suit is absolutely mandatory for survival. Cheers, Cameron M. Smith
I am awfully lucky to have made our connection with Copenhagen Suborbitals this year. I'm heading back there ASAP; certainly next summer, hopefully as soon as this Winter. Above, photo from the home page of the Danish Ministry of Science Facebook page; for a promo of their upcoming Science Night (Kulturnat Uddannelsesministeriet) they've used a photo of the pressure suit! I'm in good company.
In 2015 I am flying my suit, life-support system and balloon to a great height, and, wow, that will happen despite many detractors who like to sit at their computers, telling me why I will fail!
Some time in the next few weeks explorersweb.com will run an article of mine RE our recent pressure suit tests in Copenhagen. Here is a part in which I expand on larger issues:
"It's taken a generation for the truth to sink in: we really did kill the Apollo missions, the human exploration of space. We really did quit. So at Copenhagen Suborbitals and Project ALPHA (and many other private enterprises worldwide) we are taking the first steps ourselves, retracing exactly, and slowly, and hazardously, the steps that first put humans into space just over a generation ago...Forget 'space' as the domain only of NASA or the Russian space program; both of those structures are now sad husks, each wildly out of touch with significantly reduced global economy. Forget exploring Mars on a NASA expedition; we’re going to spend the next two generations just getting our crumpled country functioning again. So we must now rebuild human space activity, from the ground up, privately. OK…let’s draw up a plan. Let’s start building." -- ((c) 2013) Cameron M. Smith
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was a light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach...Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep untroubled sleep.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Where there is life, JRRT also wrote, there is also hope!
"Look all about you and you will see the very stones mastered by age; tall towers in ruin and their masonry crumbling; temples and images of gods defaced, their destined span not lengthened by any sanctity that avails against the laws of nature...the collapsed monuments of men ask whether you believe that they in their turn grow old..." -- Lucretius, c.80BC. The translation I own is (c) 1951 by R.E. Latham, published in 1994 by Penguin; it's a good and readable work.
